You never know what’s waiting around the next corner. A walking cardboard velociraptor? A hovering Delorean? A life-sized version of the game Mousetrap? All of these things are not just possible but familiar at Maker Faire, the Bay Area’s massive annual celebration of creative technology, DIY culture, and nerdy fun of all stripes. With more than one hundred Kickstarted projects proudly on display this weekend, walking around the Faire will be a bit like a family reunion for us. Our team will be there talking about the many inspiring ways makers use Kickstarter, from starting makerspaces and creating educational kits to experimenting with food hacking and turning a personal passion into a business with a first product launch.

Here’s where to find us, plus a small sampling of the many beautiful, innovative, and wonderfully weird things our creative community is bringing to the greatest show (and tell) on Earth.

Behind every Kickstarter project is someone working to bring it to life. But very few creators go it alone. Many surround themselves with trusted collaborators who help push the project forward in different ways. Some support the day-to-day campaign management. Others are intimately involved in the project development, production, or distribution. Today we’re excited to announce a feature that makes the experience of running a Kickstarter project more closely reflect the reality that creators often rely on a team of collaborators to succeed.

To date, managing a project has only been possible through a single account. When this new feature launches you can empower your team to support you by inviting multiple collaborators to contribute to your project directly. Simply assign each team member specific roles. Collaborators can help you draft your story, rewards, and FAQs before you launch your campaign. They can post updates or comments as you hit milestones throughout your campaign. Or they can help you manage surveys, publish project updates to keep your backers in the loop, and mark rewards as sent as you work to fulfill rewards.

Bringing collaborators more closely into the fold is also an opportunity to introduce and give credit to your team. And giving backers a sense of the team you’re working alongside, and the people they can look forward to getting updates from, provides them greater transparency and visibility into the creative process.

We’ve made an update to our privacy policy today to indicate that creators may introduce collaborators to their teams. The collaborators feature will officially go live next month on June 13th. In the meantime, if you’re thinking about launching a project soon, start lining up your team!

Thousands of documentary filmmakers have turned to Kickstarter over the last seven years to galvanize communities, engage audiences, and make beautiful films. More than one million people from around the world have now supported their work. Today we’re shining a spotlight on some of the amazing things that couldn’t have happened without the help of this impassioned community:

One million people have collectively backed more than 12,000 documentary film projects — and more than 5,000 of those projects have been successfully funded.

Documentaries are now backed more than 600 times every day. In Kickstarter’s first year, they were backed just 18 times a day.

To date, $120 million has been pledged to documentary film on Kickstarter.

Of the one million people who have supported documentary film on Kickstarter, more than 460,000 of them have backed projects in other creative categories as well.

Having a few voices and outlets beyond your immediate circle sharing your work can be very helpful in getting the word out. It introduces new people to what you’re working on and readers can very likely become fans or backers. But how do you get bloggers or journalists to cover your project? Getting press to cover your project can be tough, but even if a few outlets with followers interested in your project’s themes cover your story, that’s a win! Here’s how you can find the outlets that make the most sense for your project and create an actionable pitch to get them excited about what you’re making.

Hidden behind the world of laugh tracks and blockbuster mediocrities there hums and buzzes a class of new voices and surreal experiments in comedic cinema. Finally they’ll be seen: The Brooklyn Comedy Festival and Kickstarter are teaming up to curate and present SHORTS, our first-ever comedy short film festival in Brooklyn this summer. SHORTS will take place August 27–28 at Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg. Tickets go on sale on July 19th, via the Brooklyn Comedy Festival and Nitehawk Cinema.

One of the best parts of working at Kickstarter is getting to talk to people about their ideas. It's so inspiring to learn from passionate, creative people — it's the kind of thing that never gets old. Making tools and resources that help creators transform their great ideas into finished pieces that they can share with anyone, for us, is the icing on the cake.

We’ll deliver our first annual benefit statement outlining how we’re approaching each of those commitments beginning in 2017. But we wanted to start supporting awesome organizations working to build a more creative and equitable world right away.

We recently made donations to four outstanding organizations with very different but complementary approaches to realizing that mission. We think they're all doing incredible work, and want to take a moment to shine a spotlight on them.